Gender Disparities in Philosophy: Do We Need to

Know Why to Know What to Do?

It makes sense for us to try to explain and understand the data. We should look at role the data has and its limits.

Behind the data are people doing things in interpersonal, social and institutional contexts with other people. So the

data raises questions about our actions—What are we responsible for? What do we want to hold other people

responsible for? What do we want to do differently? What can we do differently?

Measures of Absence/Exclusion of Women in Philosophy

• Philosophy ( about 30%) is only slightly above physics, CS (20%) and engineering in number of women PhDs. (47% of all PhDs)

• Top 20 departments have about 20% women.

• Pipeline: Possible leaks. Intro classes are about 42% women. Majors are about 28% women.

• Journal articles between 2002-2007 are 95.56% male, 4.4% female. Discussions/symposia are 90.2% male, 9.8% female

• (Source: Sally Haslanger)

VERY BASIC QUESTIONS

• Why does this matter? And how much?

• Injustice? Distorting effects of exclusion? Harm to existing members? Desire to dissociate ourselves from an historical injustice? Loss of potential talent in the field?

• [No perfect correlate to race with these arguments, but some analogies.]

Moral concerns v. pragmatic/self-interested concerns: The more serious, the more we can expect people to do.

Self interest [Virginia Valian]

• It is in our interest to widen the pool. “The larger the pool, the greater the choice and the higher the likelihood of finding well-qualified candidates…”

• Equity brings diversity and innovations arise from diversity.

• Women students and students of color will see that there is room for them.

• Equity improves institutional quality to “build “loyalty from within, attract interest from outside, and increase the attractiveness of the institution…” (p. 209)

How motivating are self-interest arguments?

• Q: If it is clearly in the self interest of everyoneto increase number of women, is the absence of women an accident caused by ignorance on the part of gatekeepers to their own interest?

• Are anyone’s interests served by retaining the status quo?

• Are people who aren’t harmed by the current status quo eager to change it?

• Are we dependent on them to change it?

Morality (Injustice)

• If there is an injustice: Who is suffering from the injustice?

• Undisputed: Current women in philosophy who cannot succeed or who hit ‘the ivory ceiling. Those denied a valuable good by others because of bias.

• More in question: Those who were deterred early on? Are there ‘missing women’ in philosophy?

Questions about responsibility

Who is responsible • Causally, morally• Forward looking: Who should take responsibility?

Who should do what?• When talking about larger social and cultural

practices, blame might be a distraction.• Most remedies hope for a collective effort &

include those who aren’t harmed by the practices.

• How do we get them on board?

Education/ career in philosophy is a valuable good

• We aren’t responsible for fixing every injustice but we are responsible for not inflicting injustice.

• Any person with the power to impede someone else’s access to an education and/or career in philosophy runs the risk of doing this to another person.

• A basic moral reason to do something: Don’t unjustly deprive others of a good they’re entitled to.

EXPLANATIONS

We should be cautious about explanations

Some explanations sound more plausible than others and seem to explain more data (including personal experiences of women, e.g.).

Different explanations of the disparity seem to lead to different views of what the problem is and who must do what. Some issues (1) We may be biased toward our favored explanation or resist more ‘radical’ explanations (2) We may mistakenly assume the explanation determines who is responsible and what the remedy is.

An exonerating explanation?

• Women [or Blacks, or Latinos] are to be found in smaller numbers in Philosophy because Philosophy doesn’t appeal to them as much as Philosophy appeals to men [white men].

• OR People from oppressed groups seek practical careers. (Academia involves economic risk)

• Philosophy doesn’t appeal to them. No injustice has been done.

• Does this explanation• (a) Remove all responsibility for further action • or (b) Remove all need for a remedy?

Voluntary affiliation doesn’t show there’s no responsibility to do anything• Voluntary exclusion may result of

values/norms/practices/concerns, etc. that exclude others arbitrarily.

• *Benson Mates: “It wouldn’t have mattered if Plato were a woman. Plato would have the same arguments.” +

• A counterfactual—what would philosophy be like if women had somehow taken over in the 1940s when women started going to college in larger numbers (only 2.8% of women went to college by 1900)—is practically impossible to simulate.

Even if exclusion were fully voluntary

We could

• (1) Make philosophy more attractive to women

• (2) Find ways to bring women into the upper levels the hierarchy (e.g., by favoring fields with women).

• Do individuals have a weaker claim to injustice because they aren’t be deprived of a good they value? Maybe not if gender hierarchy shaped the practice in the first place.

Two Kinds of Exclusion

• Exclusion 1: Women are excluded from philosophy [or at the bottom of the hierarchy] purely because of bias. Given current norms, evaluative schemas, etc. they satisfy all criteria. They are able but can’t succeed.

• Exclusion 2: Women are excluded from philosophy [at the bottom] because given current norms, evaluative schemas, etc. they don’t satisfy all criteria. They are able but don’t fit somehow & can’t succeed.

IMPLICIT BIAS, SCHEMAS & ‘GENDERING’

Implicit Bias

• Implicit bias + stereotype threat is a central explanation [Valian, 2005; Haslanger, 2008]

• Implicit bias

Why this schema & not another?

• A hard to answer question: Schemas, categories and stereotypes help us carve up the world and operate in the world.

• Why do they carve up the world in a way that subordinates people, ranks them, creates hierarchies, etc?

• One answer: This is a leftover artifact of a time when those biases were embedded in how we lived but we don’t need them now.

• Another answer: These biases are not

Gendering?• Some feminist theorists suspect: Gender

norms have a role in upholding certain social practices & vice versa.

• Longino (1992): Gender, race and class are “features of social structures first and characteristics of individuals only secondarily.”

• An example: War, militarism and masculinity are mutually supportive. Some masculine norms fit well with militarist values. A militarized society will also value and uphold masculine traits.

REMEDIES AND OBSTACLES

A Worry

• If there is a correlation between prestige and male gender valence, is there a (slight?) disincentive to do anything that undermines the male gender valence?